Echo
by Arivania Moons
Summary: On the twentieth anniversary of her death, Reaver takes the time to reflect on his odd friendship with the Hero Queen. If only the echoes of the past would leave him alone long enough to actually reminisce on good times, as they seem hellbent on making him feel guilty for the bad times. [One-Shot] [Rated for a few references not suitable for younger audiences]


**So, I recently played through Fable II again and will be playing Fable III shortly. While playing, I came to a few conclusions based off multiple different factors and decided that I would reveal them through a series of connected one-shots. This is the first one. Hope you all enjoy! Oh, and I also did a little bit of research. I'm going off the idea that heroes live longer lifespans than normal humans do, though they still die. Also, I've discovered that, other than the white hair, Castle Fairfax can undo the aging the Shadow Court did to my character who still looked a bit old after the death of Lucian, but looked young again after sleeping in the Castle. There are a few other factors that I'll reveal in other one-shots.**

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It felt strange to stand there, in her tomb. He had always known he would outlive her, but it was still odd to think that she was gone. He had gotten used to her presence in the time he had known her, allowing her closer than anyone before her. All because she understood his pain in a way that no-one else did, a pain he tried to tell himself (and failed) wasn't really there. Twenty years. Had she really died only such a short time ago? It felt like far longer than two decades had passed since she died. He wouldn't admit it to anyone but himself that he missed the way her blue eyes had twinkled with mischief in youth and wisdom in old age. The way she had once looked at him disapprovingly, yet understandingly whenever _that_ time of year came around.

She should have tried to kill him at some point, but she never had. She had only ever offered herself up each year, taking that seal so that some poor sod wouldn't accidentally get sacrificed. He remembered how irritated and grateful he had been upon learning that it was the castle that had eventually began to rejuvenate her after twenty years of the same old tune, though he still wondered how she had survived long enough for that to even happen. Even so, he was grateful to her even if, at first, her presence and persistence had been annoying.

It was strange to think about it, but over the course of those forty years he had known her, she had become his _friend_. A true, bonified friend, even if their friendship was rather...odd. No one understood it, not even he himself did and he doubted that even the Great Hero Queen had understood it. Even so, he cherished the memories even if he would never utter so aloud. There were so many things he would never admit when it came to her, but it was some comfort to know that she would have understood. He never knew how she could be so empathetic. He never would.

He remembered the first time they had met each other and it was odd to think that she had been so _young_ back then. Twenty-nine with the weight of the world having been thrust upon her shoulders by that blind witch. Sure, if it wasn't for said witch, she wouldn't have been the person he had known, but it still boiled his blood when he thought of how that witch had abandoned her after the witch was through with her.

Back then he hadn't fully cared yet, though now he did completely. Twenty-nine was too young, especially to have endured something like working at the Tattered Spire for Lucian. Twenty-nine was too young to have to endure something like learning that her sister's murderer had murdered her husband and children. He couldn't believe that he had really tried to hand her back to that madman back then, that he had really been so rotten without a care. Now he did care, but he had promised that he wouldn't let the world see that change.

He had promised and, although he betrayed many people, he had never broken a promise. Had never broken his _word_. Even if he never understood _why_ she made him make that promise. Closing his eyes, he recalled that first time, the first attempt at betrayal. She appeared in his mind, looking just as she had that night after returning from the Shadow Court. The way her white-blue eyes flashed when he shot that man - an acquaintance of hers she had been quite fond of, he remembered. Barnum. He remembered admiring to himself how she still managed to look beautiful despite the sudden aging, no longer appearing youthful but rather looking more like someone's grandmother. Her skin was still that odd cream color he had never seen on anyone else and her hair had turned the color of freshly laid snow.

She used to keep her hair in a thin braid back then. She used to scowl at him and her eyes used to darken from white-blue to sky blue in his presence. She'd tried to shoot him in the groin and had almost succeeded. The only reason she missed, she had told him, was because she _needed_ him and he was no use to her if he was mourning his favorite body part. He remembered how much he had hated her for that, despite her alluring beautify and had gleefully begun to form her of his betrayal. He remembered her barking laughter at his words.

 _"You really think that Lucian will be interested in me when he learns who you are, Reaver? Oh trust me, he'll be far more interested in you than an escaped soldier, given who you are, Thief."_

Her words had been cruel, her voice sickeningly sweet, and her smile sadistic. He remembered how Lucian had done as she said, double-crossing him. He shivered with how she had been back then. How would the world react to knowing that their precious Hero Queen had once been, although a good person, rather vindictive and spiteful? Bitter? He had learned from Hannah that she hadn't always been so bitter, but the Tattered Spire had made her such. He could believe that. Didn't change how chillingly sadistic she was in battle.

He would have never won against her had he ever truly chosen to fight her. He'd have been dead within a few minutes, he was sure. Right from the start he had recognized the threat she was. That's part of why he had attempted to betray her again while also attempting to save his own skin when it came to Lucian. That also failed, though he remembered how he had felt his blood run cold when he watched Lucian and her interact that night.

 _"I should have gone out into the darkness and searched out your body. I should have severed your head, just to be certain you were dead. I didn't only because you had flown out the window of the tower, a fall that would kill anyone else, and because back then, it had torn my heart out to kill you. Of course it had, you were only a child after all. Amelia's age, even."_

His lip curled as he remembered what Lucian said next.

 _"Because of that, however, I allowed the bloodline to flourish. Oh how you flourished. I could have sent my men, but I learned from that night. Your husband, your children are dead. I watched as your home was coated with their blood myself. I almost faltered, you know, when I heard your youngest crying out for you, the way you had cried for your sister that night. But now, the last of your bloodline shall flow out onto this hilltop. I won't fail a second time."_

Lucian had been cruel, striking her where it had hurt. He remembered the way she had nearly fallen to her knees at the words about her first family, remembered the way she had begun to shake at the mention of her youngest. He never had asked how old her children had been, but given that the youngest was born shortly before she left for the Tattered Spire the first time, he estimated they were around the age of ten. Lucian had callously murdered her children, husband, and sister.

Perhaps she had only lived just to spite him, as that was the very reason she bought Fairfax Castle and made it her own, renovating and changing everything about it. It only vaguely resembled the castle it had once been and was now known by a new name, Bowerstone Castle. He felt calling it Castle Hero was far more fitting, but he didn't have anything to do with it's naming so it didn't mater.

Back then, none of this had mattered to him. _She_ hadn't mattered to him, yet now here he was. Sixty years. It was hard to think that all that happened sixty years ago. Given that she had turned thirty shortly after Lucian's death, she would be ninety now. Still young compared to him, although middle aged for a hero.

How many times had he attempted to betray her before she had finally grown onto him enough that he stopped? How long had it taken for him to realize exactly how he felt about her? She had stumbled into queen hood by then, having accidentally become queen when she ended up buying every last stall, shop, and house to save up the money to buy that castle. She hadn't even realized what she had done until everyone in Albion had agreed to elect her as their queen and support her as such, people creating a royal guard for her.

It was a shame that Garth and Hannah never got the chance to watch her grow into her new role among the people of Albion, that they never got to say their goodbyes to her. He remembered the shock on their faces when they finally came back to Albion to visit, shortly before Garth died of old age. They had just missed her funeral, even, and both had felt such guilt over not returning to visit her sooner. Hannah had been unable to stay longer than learning that her friend had become Albion's queen and had just died. Garth, on the other hand, had demanded to know the whole story.

He knew that Garth had, until his death, felt guilt over the fact that he had never been able to do more for her. Garth had been there the night Rose had died and had lamented about seeing the children, about how he should have questioned why they were there. That he should have stormed into Lucian's study and demanded what he planned to do with a pair of street orphans. She had anticipated this and tasked him with delivering Garth a large stack of letters - forty years worth - along with her final message to him.

 _"Tell Garth that there was nothing he could do, please. Not when my sister died and certainly not this time. My time is shortly upon me, Reaver. I know this well, so don't look at me that way."_

It was strange to think that she had started talking after entering queen hood. He remembered the first time he heard her talk, spinning a tail for a young Walter and a young Jasper. The two hadn't been more than ten at the time, at the beginning of her reign as queen. It was odd to think she had only been queen for twenty years with how she had been worshiped and praised by her people.

 _"The Princess could not stand to see the one she loved being accused so, but knew there was little she could do. She was the youngest child, so she had no say in her parents' court."_

It was odd to think that those two sentences were the first ones he had heard her speak. He had understood, then, why she mostly been known to her people as "Sparrow". Her voice was as beautiful as any bird's song, with the same softness and elegance to it, even if she, herself, did not notice it.

 _"Please, Reaver. Betray me one last time. Let me die by the same weapon as my sister, in the same room as her. Let me die the way she did. Please."_

Her last words to him. She had begged him to kill her, to let her die the way she wanted to. She hadn't wanted to die in any of the ways that Theresa had predicted for her, she wanted to die on her own terms. Her own terms had been to die the way her sister had - shot dead in the castle's study.

 _"I want you to betray me one last time, Reaver. No one will ever know who did it if you do. I will take my secrets to my grave and you will bear them for all eternity, the punishment for killing me."_

He tried to shut out her words as they flooded back to him, tried to block out the way she had looked that night. Yet her silhouette haunted him still, framed by moonlight. Her snow-white hair worn long and cascading over her shoulders, her white-blue eyes glinting with knowledge and exhaustion, her pale skin almost sparkling in the dim light. She had looked beautiful. She had made sure that she looked her best, because she knew he could not resist saying yes when she looked that way. He hadn't wanted to kill her, but she had forced his gun into his hand and held it there. Held his hand to the trigger, the barrel to her chest. It had been pointed at the exact place where Lucian had twice shot her.

 _"I will die anyways. Either by this eternal scar ripping open or by my heart suddenly stopping. Perhaps my heart will even burst. These are the three different possibilities Theresa gave to me. She ignored any other ways, as she always does. They call her a seer, but Lucian was correct in calling her a fortune-teller. Just like a fraud, she ensures her so-called vision come to fruition. Well, not this time. This time I will do something she cannot predict, like the birth of my little Rose."_

Theresa had tolerated him and never paid much attention to futures and possibilities involving him. She had taken advantage of that. He remembered asking her how if he was just a tool to her. Her response had surprised him and it still befuddled him.

 _"I count you as a friend, Reaver, and I do not regret making you my lover for a night. I cannot say I love you, for even if I truly did, I cannot truly believe that you will or have changed at all. Yes, I suppose I did use you, but I chose you because I must admit, I admired you. You have a freedom that I never had. That night was the first and only night where I have truly done something I wanted to do. You are still my friend Reaver and I would not mind continuing to call you my lover, but only between us. I enjoy your company, but I cannot fully trust you, even now. Even after all these years."_

He knew he would understand her words if he mulled them over long enough and studied them hard enough, but he didn't _want_ to. Because it hurt, because it was still a form of rejection even if she did not turn him away from her bed. Perhaps that was why he had promised to keep the fact that he was her youngest's father a secret, even from their daughter. A part of him hated the child, blaming her for the death of her mother. The other part, the larger part, was proud to be able to claim he was her father, even if it was only privately. Especially since she was the one that Sparrow named for her dead sister.

He was also somewhat proud to say that he was Sparrow's only lover who survived being so and his daughter was the only child of hers that had lived through being hers biologically. Well, maybe not the only one. He still wasn't entirely sure weather or not she had adopted Logan, considering that it was very possible that his birth had been predicted by Theresa and that's why she didn't count his father amongst the ones she had chosen to do something she _wanted_ with.

He wanted to believe Logan was adopted, if he was being honest. If only so that he could have the comfort of knowing he and his daughter were the only ones who had survived out of all the ones that came before them, the ones that Rose would never know about unless she found her mother's hidden study in the Library. It was possible that Rose would as she was the absolute picture of who her mother had once been, including the lush brown hair that her mother had when he first met her, before he sent her to the Shadow Court. Same personality to.

"I think you'd be proud of your daughter," he finally said to the lone coffin. "She's just like you, you know. Same fiery, defiant attitude. Same viciousness in battle and same benevolence as queen. It's almost painful, you know, just how much she _is_ you. She even has your _voice_ and I sometimes don't know what to do or think when it comes to her." He sighed, rubbing his face with a hand. "You're probably pissed at me, at Logan. You'd probably look at me and tell me that you knew I hadn't changed a bit."

 _"I changed, for you. I'm not the same man you met forty years ago. I can't kill you."_

His pleas to her had gone unheard. He shouldn't have been surprised.

"You're probably wondering where Walter went wrong with Logan. I don't think it's anything like that. I think it was that witch. She spoke to Logan, got into his head. Tried to get into Rose's head, too, but didn't succeed there." Here he paused. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything I've done, but you made me promise... I couldn't break that promise and this is the only way I know to drown out the pain of it. I'm sorry." He lowered his head. "I know sorry doesn't begin to cover it. I'm also sorry that this is the first time since seven years ago that I've visited. I know that sorry was never something you accepted from me, from anyone, but it's all I can think to offer. I don't know what else to do." Suddenly, he looked up and straightened his posture. "No, I do know what I can do. I'll protect her from the shadows, keep an eye on her. I'll make sure she doesn't get into too much trouble. I'll... I'll give her hints, so she can find your study. I'll contact Hannah, have her come meet Rose. I'll make sure that you're remembered for thousands of years to come, that everyone knows the sacrifices you made to make this kingdom what it is and to keep the world from being destroyed by the Tattered Spire. This I swear to you, Blade the Hero Queen."

He would keep this promise. He had to.

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 **This went a lot differently than I originally had planned. But I like it. I changed up some bits of dialogue from the game, expanding on what was being said. I know Reaver is rather OOC here, but he's had time to become this way. You also have no idea how much calculating it took to figure out certain things, like Sparrow's estimated age in the game. Also, this Sparrow is based off the one I played as. She was extremely good and pure, but still very vindictive when she wanted to be. Anyways, I hope you liked this!**


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